"At COMPANY 'REDYNS (When it was one)' we value your privacy a great
deal. Almost as much as we value the ability to take the data you give us
and slice, dice, julienne, mash, puree and serve it to our business
partners, which may include third-party advertising networks, data brokers,
networks of affiliate sites, parent companies, subsidiaries, and other
entities, none of which we’ll bother to list here because they can change
from week to week and, besides, we know you’re not really paying attention.
We’ll also share all of this information with the government. We’re just
suckers for guys with crew cuts carrying subpoenas.
Remember, when you visit our Web site, our Web site is also visiting
you. And we’ve brought a dozen or more friends with us, depending on how
many ad networks and third-party data services we use. We’re not going to
tell which ones, though you could probably figure this out by carefully
watching the different URLs that flash across the bottom of your browser as
each page loads or when you mouse over various bits. It’s not like you’ve
got better things to do.
Each of these sites may leave behind a little gift known as a cookie --
a text file filled with inscrutable gibberish that allows various computers
around the globe to identify you, including your preferences, browser
settings, which parts of the site you visited, which ads you clicked on,
and whether you actually purchased something.
Those same cookies may let our advertising and data broker partners
track you across every other site you visit, then dump all of your
information into a huge database attached to a unique ID number, which they
may sell ad infinitum without ever notifying you or asking for permission.
Also: We collect your IP address, which might change every time you log
on but probably doesn’t. At the very least, your IP address tells us the
name of your ISP and the city where you live; with a legal court order, it
can also give us your name and billing address (see guys with crew cuts and
subpoenas, above).
Besides your IP, we record some specifics about your operating system
and browser. Amazingly, this information (known as your user agent string)
can be enough to narrow you down to one of a few hundred people on the
Webbernets, all by its lonesome. Isn’t technology wonderful?
The data we collect is strictly anonymous, unless you’ve been kind
enough to give us your name, email address, or other identifying
information. And even if you have been that kind, we promise we won’t sell
that information to anyone else, unless of course our impossibly obtuse
privacy policy says otherwise and/or we change our minds tomorrow.
We store this information an indefinite amount of time for reasons even
we don’t fully understand. And when we do eventually get around to deleting
it, you can bet it’s still kicking around on some network backup drives in
somebody’s closet. So once we have it, there’s really no getting it back.
Hell, we can’t even find our keys half the time -- how do you expect us to
keep track of this stuff?
Not to worry, though, because we use the very bestest security measures
to protect your data against hackers and identity thieves, though no one
has actually ever bothered to verify this. You’ll pretty much just have to
take our word for it.
So just to recap: Your information is extremely valuable to us. Our
business model would totally collapse without it. No IPO, no stock options;
all those 80-hour weeks and bupkis to show for it. So we’ll do our very
best to use it in as many potentially profitable ways as we can conjure,
over and over, while attempting to convince you there’s nothing to worry
about.
(Hey, Did somebody hold a gun to your head and force you to visit this
site? No, they did not. Did you run into a pay wall on the home page
demanding your Visa number? No, you did not. You think we just give all
this stuff away because we’re nice guys? Bet you also think every roomful
of manure has a pony buried inside.)
This privacy policy may change at any time. In fact, it’s changed three
times since we first started typing this. Good luck figuring out how,
because we’re sure as hell not going to tell you. But then, you probably
stopped reading after paragraph three."